Missing Child Found Alive After 23 Years


It was a long time coming for this happy ending. In 1987, Carlina White was snatched from her hospital bed in Harlem. She was just 19 days old.  After a lifetime of suspecting she wasn’t related to the family who raised her, the now 23-year-old White got on the Internet and started digging. The New York Post says that’s when she came across baby pictures of herself on a website for missing children.

The National Center of Missing and Exploited Children organized for both White and her two biological parents to receive DNA tests. They did and when the results came back, there was a match. And then there was a big party. Says White’s biological mom: “We had a ball. I cooked and invited all the family. We hugged and cried. She wanted to know about everyone.”

Investigators say charges could still be filed against White’s kidnappers, as there is no statute of limitations in child kidnapping cases, if the child is still alive at the time of prosecution. In 1992, the city, which runs the hospital White was abducted from, paid a $750,000 settlement to her biological parents.

UPDATE: The Post has identified the woman who allegedly kidnapped White as an infant and says the FBI is hot on her tail. Ann Pettway is described as a “drug-addled drifter” who disappeared yesterday after the story of Carlina White’s reunion with her biological parents broke. Apparently, the Post had arranged to meet Pettway at the Connecticut home of her mother and she didn’t show.

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See the Post’s exclusive video of the White family reunion:

 

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